I endured another birthday a few days back. I got the requisite three or so cards in the mail. A call from two relatives. Wifey's special pistachio dessert. Oh, and some gifts that I feel were easy convenient purchases. Nothing special really, but well received gifts and offerings nonetheless. I don't know anyone half as fortunate as me.
Boss at work holds a luncheon once a month for all who celebrate birthdays for that month. I look forward to attending every year. This year's is on Wednesday the 26th and it is already appearing very interesting. I have a feeling that we will be discussing the terms of surrender from one of our competitors.
A couple of long-time close friends of mine also celebrated birthdays in recent days. JH in Phoenix and BR in New Jersey.
On the day of my birthday, I wondered about a girl from grade school who not only shared the same birthday as I, but she also tied her shoes the same way that I did and continue to do so. Her name then was Erica Cárdenas. She and her family moved away after the fifth grade. I haven't seen her since. I wonder if she's the Erica Cárdenas who writes for the Phoenix based Latino Perspectives Magazine.
http://www.latinopm.com/Latino-Perspectives-Magazine/Business-Personal-Finance/Careers/I was also recalling on my birthday about what a wonderful 7th birthday I had once. My father needed to go to the grocery store for something or other on that day and took me with him. Coincidentally, the grocery store was eliminating its toy aisle on that day. And, lucky me, the store's manager allowed me to take as many model kits as I could carry away from the store. I must have come home with ten boxes of them. I remember one of the kits was for an Apollo Saturn 5 rocket. Way cool. I had the world by the tail after I found some model kit glue.
I once spent my birthday in Vancouver. That was cool also.
Once on my birthday, about ten years ago, I was one of about 150 people in front of Joe Cocker -- and what was about an 8 piece band that included backing vocalists -- performing "Feeling Alright". What a hell of a treat at 9:30 in the morning that was. I felt
all right the entire day that day.
When I was in college, one of the roommates that I had then, his birthday was the day before mine. We went on a bender that started the evening before his' and ended early the morning after mine. That happened on the occasion of that special birthday. The one when we both became of legal drinking age then. I remember we blew a lot of money and got really loaded. I don't remember much of that birthday today. I don't think he would today either.
On the morning of my birthday this year, I woke up because of the dream I was having. I was being chased by Suzanne Sugarbaker. Not Delta Burke. Suzanne Sugarbaker was chasing me around a big oval table on the set of that program "Designing Women".
I believe I know why the hell I subliminilized such a dream. Perhaps I did because earlier that week, Jeopardy had an question to an answer about that program of her's and the answer was: "what is Atlanta". Also, I happened to have watched CBS News Sunday Morning a few days earlier and one of the stories was an exposé on Dixie Carter. For the TV eunuchs, Carter was a member of the acting ensemble.
By the way, it was the rubenesque Suzanne Sugarbaker who was chasing me around. Not the early version of her.
I told Wifey about it and she said that she probably wanted to give me a birthday kiss. I mentioned why couldn't it have been Kristian Alfonzo? Her answer was, "I don't know why but, I'll make you forget both of them tonight, ok?"
Wifey took me out to dinner this year, to one of my favorite restaurants around: The Trap Rock. It's not your regular brew pub. While their entrees there are quite delicious and vary depending on the season, it's their appetizers that make this restaurant one of my favorites. On that night, that's all that we ate. It was a good delectable evening. But, something happened that I thought was a little unusual and strange.
After we had finished eating, and we were both there just small talking and nursing our drinks, Wifey recognized an acquaintance of her's (whom I had never met or ever heard she being mentioned) as she walked by our table. Her name is Grace. I have not met a more bubbly personality in a very long time. Grace exclaimed Wifey's name when she recognized her and then she uttered my name. What I thought was odd was that she pulled back once she appeared to catch herself verbalizing "Jerry".
Maybe I'm making too much of it, but how or why would she know my name? She's an acquaintance of Wifey's, not a friend. Wifey never noticed this subtle exchange at all. In fact, a few moments after Grace's grand entrance, Wifey introduced me to her. She reached out her hand and I double clasped it and I voiced a pleasantry. Her husband then entered the scene and I shook his hand. Grace and her husband then joined us at our table and we visited for about a half hour.
During that time, in more than one instance, Grace prefaced a couple of comments regarding her with "You don't know me but, .....". Lots of eye contact and patting gestures. Flirty like all get-out.
Wifey did pick-up on her eye contact and all her touchiness and she mentioned that after they
graciously left.
Wifey said, "Well now. I guess I’m going to have to make you forget all about her tonight also."
Right now, I can really relate to a recent "Target" stores television commercial starring Jack LaLanne. It’s likely it’s been playing in your market during news programs, on primetime or your late local news. I’m nowhere in shape like he is at 92 years of age and there’s much to envy regarding his life and good health. It’s what he says at the end of the spot that has struck a loud consonant chord with me.
Long Live Living Long and Loving Every Minute of It!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JHNpHisPUf8*!*
It is difficult to think of that day six years ago. It took a few hours afterwards then to actually fathom much of what had happened during that one hour and forty-five minutes. That's all it took to change everything for everyone in the civilized and Western World.
When I saw The Towers fall, I wondered how many people were in them at that moment. I wondered how many of them I may have known or had casually crossed paths with.
When I saw The Towers fall, I felt a thunderous collective outcry from legions of souls. I could feel the cry of thousands one moment and in the next moment I could feel every voice being extinguished. I felt an immediate hollow develop.
People recall the events of that day and everyone has their personal recollection of it. For me, the events of that day cannot be detached from some of what happened the night before.
The night of September 10th and into the early hours of the 11th, a cold front rolled through the New York metropolitan area. The passing weather system created heavy rain and much spectacular thunder and lightning throughout the night. It was that system that comes once a year and eradicates any sense of the summer away. The kind you wake up to the next morning and unmistakably sense The Fall.
The rain and lightning the night before made for some great sleeping weather. The kind anyone would want to share intimately with someone else. I very much enjoy the rumble of thunder, the flashes of lightning and the sound of heavy rain and being in bed with Wifey. Regrettably, it seems that there just hasn't been a night with weather like that since.
The morning of the 11th was heavenly and dream-like. The beauty of it can not be described in words adequately. Everything had been cleansed by the heavy overnight rain. The air was so crisp, clean and sweet that every breath of it made you feel fortunate to be alive that morning. On that morning, the Sun was shining more brightly and the sky was bluer than they had ever been. It was a remarkable looking start to that day.
Wifey's plan was to drop the four-year-old at pre-school and take the two-year-old to near bye Short Hills Mall to check on some sales. She was to meet another mom at the mall. So, Wifey and The Savages left that morning like any other morning.
I stayed behind about another 20 minutes. Enough to wrangle my coffee and to head downstairs to check on traffic one last time. Manny, the owner of the lawn service who we use, had just done our lawn and a half dozen surrounding others on the street. The smell of freshly cut grass added to the morning's magnificence.
I went outside to start the car, rescue the newspaper and wave a hello to Manny. I came back indoors to see the traffic report on TV at 8:55 but there was no traffic report on WABC, WNBC or on WCBS by that time. The promise that the day had beaconed had suddenly collapsed and perished in a very ugly and extreme manner.
The newscaster on the TV kept saying that a "plane" had just hit the World Trade Center. What kind of plane would create such smoke? Certainly he cannot mean an airliner?
I stood and watched for more minutes and just after 9 a.m., the image on the television showed the shadowy likeness of another plane approaching and then crashing into the other tower.
Jet planes! They were passenger jet planes! Jet planes had just struck both towers!
"Manny!!" I screamed out the sliding-glass door. "
Manny, pronto pronto ven aquí! Algo grande esta sucediendo en Nueva York!!"
Manny walked into the family room and we both stood there motionless for a minute or two watching the television. Manny made the sign of the cross and mumbled some prayer or a blessing of some sort. Manny said that his daughter, a lawyer, works in a building a block away from the towers.
Manny then began to appear nervous. He reached for his cell phone and tried and tried to call his daughter but, the lines were already stuffed with impenetrable volume. Soon after the first plane had impacted tower number one, calling into Manhattan had become impossible. Cell or land line, it made no difference.
Manny yelled out the sliding-glass door to his crew and in Spanish instructed them to finish up quickly and fold it all up right away. Some of the crew came up to the sliding-glass door to peer and witness what the television was revealing.
I remember Manny becoming visibly nervous and excusing himself away. I got on the phone and called Wifey and told her not to go to any public places (especially The Short Hills Mall) and to just come home. I told her I was going to race to work.
Wifey was with her good friend ME when I called. ME implored Wifey to call me back and tell me to stop. Wifey did and gave me the widow angle. As she called, I was learning through the voice on the radio that the city had been shut down. All the tunnels and bridges were closed in or out of the city. I was forced to stay. I wasn't able to call work the rest of the day.
News of the Pentagon and the Pennsylvania flights broke.
I drove home and readied the
gat. I got the cash limit from the bank machine and then quickly went and filled both cars with gasoline. Wifey's SUV tank holds 42 gallons and can cruise about 700 miles without a fill. We began to plot a back roads drive to Buffalo, New York -- to her aunt and uncle's house -- if anything bigger and more significant were to occur.
For the rest of the day, the phone at the house rang off the hook from people who were on our Holiday card list.
I never saw my colleague, Don DiFranco again. In our town alone, seven dads never came back that day. Manny's daughter turned out to be alright and he very emotionally told me a week later how difficult it was for him and his wife not knowing about their daughter for so many hours.
Sometimes, people who don't live or worked in the NY metro at the time, ask me what it was like and I tell them that I was lucky I was not in the city at the time. I always preface the answer to that question by always stating that the day had started out like a beautiful dream only to radically turn and become a horrible, horrible nightmare all of a sudden.
One that I and the rest of the world have not woken up from yet.
http://obits.syracuse.com/GB/GuestbookView.aspx?PersonID=107469*!*
